Wake Up
by SuprSingr
Summary: "You wonder if you'll ever be able to find the smell of delicious food anything but completely insufferable." Contains language. Eventual AxH.
1. Seconds

**A/N: **Hm. Just something recent that I'm considering expanding on. I have more inspiration for it, but I have so many projects right now, I'm not sure if I want to bother. Opinions, anyone?

If I do expand, the title'll be getting changed. Just a warning.

* * *

**Seconds**

* * *

You wake up to the smell of pancakes.

It still catches you off guard, still makes you clench your eyes tighter shut and scowl a little against your pillow, just for an instant. It's a gut reaction you still haven't managed to completely nick out, but as you unclench your eyes and open them to the first dimmed rays of sunlight, your face naturally relaxing as the sounds of shuffling and humming finally register with your sleep-fogged brain, you wonder if you'll ever be able to find the smell of delicious food anything but completely insufferable.

There was never a time in your childhood that mouth-watering smells meant anything good for you. Potato dumplings and lemon souffles and fresh-ground coffee. All conditioned to make you want to grind your teeth and scream to the ceiling, to punch and throw and kick. It's hardwired into you now, as much a part of you as the darkness behind your eyelids as you close them again for a few seconds more of stolen solitude. The shuffling grows louder, and you can hear footsteps dancing closer to your door before a cheerful voice informs you that breakfast is on the table. Once, that proclamation would have made you groan and throw something at the door.

Now, you pull the covers off and grab up a pair of pajama pants from the floor. You kick them on as you hop to the door and throw it open, just in time to catch your sister's back before she rounds back into the apartment kitchen. She turns at the sound of the door, but doesn't slow her pace while you let the elastic pop against your hips and smirk at her glowing, peaceful face. "There'd better be maple syrup to go with those pancakes," you sing, and let out a small yawn against your palm when Olga's face predictably lights in a small smile.

Like she knew you would ask, and she probably did, she holds up a fresh bottle for your rapid inspection. "Picked it up last night," she says before disappearing into the next room in a swirl of green skirts. You smile blearily and don't bother to close your door when you head for the bathroom.

You brush your teeth with your eyes closed and body leaning half-dead against the sink. The smell of pancakes hasn't diminished, has followed you into the room and refused to fade even with the door in place, and you think distantly on how the smell still gives you a strong urge to head for the hills. It is strong, but you equate it more with the feeling of an unscratched itch now than something seriously life-threatening. You acknowledge it, you can't do elsewise, but it's getting easier to choke down. It's not a reasonable desire to be having, so you sniff and mentally tell it to go fuck itself.

Defense mechanisms, Dr. Bliss is always going on to you about. You've taught yourself to hate something that gives your body a positive reaction because you're afraid of the fallout. Years of thinking you might have actually made a breakthrough only for everything to fall apart again and again, in an endless loop of disappointment and heartbreak. You've taught yourself to hate many things that give you a positive reaction. It's what made you yell and push him away every time he tried to hold your hand or kiss your cheek or stand too close. Even when you had him, you didn't really. You never allowed yourself. You know that now.

You spit and open your eyes. There are light bags beneath the typical thick, forbidding unibrow and you have a zit on your cheek. Your hair is darker than it used to be and your eyes hold a hollow kind of depth that's been with you for as long as you can remember. It's been months but you still feel flayed raw from all the screaming and hate that's been thrown, both by you and others that you're still trying to convince yourself you don't want to forget. None of this is new, you've looked at yourself so many times in the last fifteen years that nothing about your reflection could ever truly surprise you, but you still feel that you should look differently than you do, in some, small way, at least. You certainly feel different.

_"You're such an angry girl, Helga, and you won't let anyone help you, so you must live with your unhappiness."_

You blink and turn the faucet off.

The pancakes _are_ delicious, and you don't hesitate to ask for seconds.

* * *

_**Thoughts?!**_


	2. Words

**A/N:** Hey, loves, I finally wrote more. I'm waiting to get a couple more reviews for LwtS before I start worrying about it again, so I thought I'd go ahead with this little project. Straight to the point, this is meant to be a kind of prelude to _The Patakis_. Very character picky-apart-ish. I'mmmm... not sure exactly where I'm going with it now. I mean, I had a pretty clear idea before, but when I actually tried to write it out, it veered into a completely different direction. Lol. Story of my life.

I was surprised to read a lot of you guys don't normally like second person. I didn't even think when I started writing in it. I guess 'cause the whole point of any story is to put you in a character's shoes, so I always thought of second person as kind of just... cutting out the middleman, so to speak. Very direct. I'm actually a little nervous now, lol. x'D I feel like I just had an apple shot from my head without ever realizing it was there in the first place. Ehe.

Eh. So long as I get positive feedback, I'll keep adding up until the end. This is all meant to lead up to a very AxH ending, which I know everyone will like. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy... me trying to be deep. Again. Hurrhurrdlyhurr.

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**Words**

* * *

She's in the living room when you reach the door.

You knew something was up the moment you gained consciousness. There were no smells. No rich, warm aromas of coffee beans and tea spice, no light, battery impressions of pancakes or waffles. The only sounds were the tweeting of birds out your window, and it was wrong because the birds are normally drowned out by the feet tapping up and down the hall: gliding, dancing, irritating, comforting. None of this was present, and you've never run faster in your life.

A mistake. You knew you'd reacted too hastily the moment the first glint of rectangular glasses caught your eye. For a long time, you're frozen, a hand braced on the doorway while your inner voice shrieks at you to retreat. Retreat, hide, lock yourself away now, before it's too late.

But it already is too late because she's looking straight at you. Her face is drawn and she doesn't look very happy to see you, but this is nothing new so it's a simple thing for your eyes to slide away and focus accusingly on your sister. The accusation falls the second they do, though, because you've never seen your sister look quite so small sitting across from Miriam before, without a trophy, piano or dish between them. It occurs to you that Miriam must have showed up at least thirty minutes ago, and your sister didn't even deign to offer her a glass of orange juice.

This is your influence, and you're so heart-wrenchingly proud for a second that you almost forget the swelling of panic in your chest. But even the pride can't last because Olga looks lost, and you're reminded that you were the catalyst to all of this. This is your doing, and the thought jolts you out of your panicked crouch faster than an angel peeking around a trash can.

You straighten, awkwardly, legs together, arms folding, and you don't know what your face looks like, but you realize it mustn't be very good because Miriam is shifting and her mouth has formed a truly pathetic attempt at a smile as she says, "Oh, hi, Helga, we were just talking about you."

Your face doesn't change, although you can't quite stop your hands from lowering down your arms. It's been months since you last spoke to this woman. Months since you told her over a line stretched across a thousand miles that you weren't coming back until things changed. And it's not okay, because you always wanted to wake up one day to everything being perfect and right. You wanted to wake up to your mom sober and alert and your dad looking at you like you mattered and your lunchbox packed and jacket clean and breakfast on the table. You wanted to wake up to the things you thought Olga had, until you realized she didn't, either. You both were pushed aside, were grumbled at and looked through. You just reacted in different ways.

You never knew that, didn't want to see, didn't want to understand Olga. You never really doubted she loved you, but she loved in a selfish way, so it didn't mean anything. Her love was always about proving something, feeling good about herself, looking good to other people. Coming across like the doting, angelic sister to this ugly wretch of a girl. Noble of her, really.

It wasn't until recently you realized her love was selfish in a completely different way. That when she hugged you, she was hugging herself. That when she cried over your displeasure, she was crying over her own displeasure. That when she showered you in nauseating amounts of unconditional love it was because the love she received was always conditional, always riding on whether or not she won this spelling bee, aced this test, cracked that code. She never wanted you to feel like that.

It made you angry then because it was still selfish, still delusional—she never considered what would truly make you happy. Not for the longest time.

But you know that Olga is only a person, and maybe you expect too much of people. You've been expecting a woman that came from your same upbringing, was raised by the same parents, to be emotionally stable and sane; to understand automatically; to know what she was doing wrong without any instruction; _to be perfect_.

And you wonder now, if you had been the first born, if you wouldn't have behaved exactly the same way.

Love is only a word until meaning has been assigned to it. Love is only an instinct until someone holds you at three in the morning while you soak their jacket in tears. Love is only chemicals in your head until you let it bend and reshape and transform you irrevocably just for the sake of someone else's smile.

Olga wanted to understand, and that's why you're living in her apartment. That's why you accepted when she asked you to move in. That's why, for the first time in your life, you didn't dismiss her as a lost cause. Because you wake up in this house to your sister sober and alert and looking at you like you matter with your lunchbox packed and jacket clean and breakfast on the table and in the end, you only really have each other. Olga's been disowned and you ran away and neither of you regret anything. It's okay because Miriam and Bob lived vicariously through Olga's successes for years and averted their eyes from you. It's okay because Olga's always been a symbol, never a person. It's okay because you've always been the personification of everything they never wanted to realize. And it works because you're exactly the same, when it comes down to it.

You were never willing to try to earn your parents' love and attention, though, and that hasn't changed. You just woke up to your mom sitting hunched over on a couch with a bleak sense of cluelessness on her face. Nothing's changed at all.

So you stand in the doorway with a galaxy of unvoiced thoughts behind a raised eyebrow, and you wait.

The wait doesn't last long before Miriam heaves a sigh. "I started AA."

Your jaw descends, then abruptly snaps shut. "Outside," you command hoarsely. "Olga, brew some coffee. This could take a while."

You watch as your sister takes a shaky breath and nearly runs from the room, and breathe in a little tremulously yourself. This is one of those situations you've been preparing for. It's taken a long time to uncoil your love for this woman out from a hundred other blacker emotions. It's taken a long time to accept your parents not just as parents, but as emotionally fucked up people, and accept that they love you, just in an emotionally fucked up way. It's taken a long time to sort all this out in your mind—a lot of therapy, a lot of thought, a lot of screaming into the night and punching walls—but you don't know that it will ever be enough. You don't know if there will ever be enough time. Enough therapy. Enough walls. You don't know that you'll ever be able to forgive with this simmering ache at the base of your soul, sticking in your throat and your nose and the corners of your eyes. You don't know that the instinct to run will ever totally fade.

The air is cold when you get outside, though, and it reminds you of your own mortality, and that's good. You sigh into it and look down at your hand, picking at a scab on your forefinger with your thumb. It's still a little dark out. You're annoyed. You should be forcing your sixth sausage down your throat right now, but instead you're out here at the asscrack of dawn to talk to your estranged mom while your older sister hides in the kitchen. You shouldn't be expected to deal with all these problems. You shouldn't be expected to give your parents chance after chance. You shouldn't have to do this, you shouldn't have to. You're only fifteen.

But you look at the helpless earnestness on your mother's face as she exhales mist into the early morning and think of nights she burned dinner –_ she always made dinner, no matter how tired or hungover she was_ – how Bob never had any time for you –_ he made time, stayed up with you all night to rehearse, tucked you into bed, smiled at your jokes_ – how a funny-headed boy met you blow for blow and growled in your face – _he always came back, always apologized, always kissed you again and again _– and you know... swallowing, you know you'll never stop trying.

Because love is only a word until you give it meaning.


End file.
